


Predictable

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Breakup, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28966614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: Newton Pulsifer doesn't have the gift of prophecy. But somehow, he's not surprised when Anathema breaks up with him.
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer
Comments: 11
Kudos: 46





	Predictable

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still working on the big silly AU I've come up with, but I wanted to post something so I wrote this little thing. It's not Aziraphale/Crowley or anything! Madness. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> (There will no doubt be editing later as I inevitably miss something, but I'm too impatient not to put it up, sorry)

Newton Pulsifer does not have the gift of prophecy. He’s never been skilled in predicting the future; he just stumbles blindly forward like the rest of humanity, one foot in front of the other, hoping the next step doesn’t lead to disaster.

All the same, he can’t say he didn’t see this coming.

“I think we should break up,” Anathema says, and his heart tightens painfully in his chest.

“All right,” he tells her simply, because he’s had plenty of time to prepare himself for this moment, and because there’s not much else to say. If Anathema has had enough of him, that’s all there is to it. He hopes she’d have let him go, too, if he’d been the one to end it.

“You’ve been so good to me,” Anathema goes on, “and you’ve really helped me to start making my own choices instead of doing what Agnes wanted for me. But…”

“But I’m part of what she wanted for you,” he offers, when she seems to run out of words, and she nods.

“I’m really sorry. I just have to… I think I just have to find love for myself.”

“No. I get it.” Newt stands with a sigh. “I’ll pack my things.”

He moves around Jasmine Cottage in a daze, picking up the few items he can call his own. He’s been staying with Anathema, on and off, since that fateful day at Tadfield airbase, and for the last two months he’s been living here properly, helping Anathema sort out the simple things she’s never had to worry about before. She’s got a job, now, pulling pints at the Tadfield Arms a few nights a week, and she’s started going along to community groups to see what it’s like - to make friends without Agnes’ hand guiding her into specific places. She likes the knitting circle, but she’s taken against the Neighbourhood Watch and the local birdwatching group. Newt, on the other hand, quite  _ likes  _ the birdwatching group, and he’s spent a few afternoons sitting with them on the village green with a notebook and a flask of tea, occasionally noting down a blackbird flying past but mostly just talking nonsense with the older men who make up most of the group. Anathema likes a bit more discipline when she takes notes on things, but Newt’s there more for the company than the birds. And they don’t have any gadgets for him to break, either.

He picks up the cheap pair of binoculars one of the other birdwatchers ordered for him and tucks it into his backpack along with his clothes; he takes his glasses case from the bedside table and collects his thermos and his favourite travel mug from the kitchen cupboard. A couple of books, a Rubik’s cube, a little stuffed rabbit he’s had for as long as he can remember. Those are the things he finds and removes from the cottage; the extent of his impact on the place. He has always known, really, that this wouldn’t be permanent.

Anathema trails in his wake from room to room, stumbling apologies and offers for him to stay one more night petering out until she is a silent ghost behind him, pouncing every now and then to hand him something he’s missed. A pen. His birdwatching notepad. A stray tie.

And then, with nothing left to collect, he finds himself standing at the door.

“I’ll call you when I get home,” he promises, “let you know I got there safe.”

“Please do. Newt, we’ll still- we’ll be friends, won’t we?”

“Of course we will.” It’s never occurred to him that he might refuse to talk to her, after this; if she wants to be friends, he’s more than happy for her to be part of his life. If she doesn’t want to be friends, he’ll miss her, but he’ll understand. Everything about them is complicated by the way they started out. If she wants to simplify her life, he won’t do anything to make it harder.

He gets into the car and drives to his mother’s house, where he’s met with a sympathetic smile and a pat on the shoulder. His mum doesn’t seem surprised, but why should she? He isn’t, after all. He’s known, since the moment Anathema told him about the prophecy concerning them, that it couldn’t last. Someone as vibrant and serious and wonderful as Anathema was never going to stay with him. More than that, though, he knows she only slept with him in the first place because her however-many-greats-great-grandmother told her she should, and that’s hardly how he expected to begin a relationship. He knows she likes him well enough, and they’ve grown to be very close friends as time has gone on, but she had no way of knowing they’d get on so well when it had all started. It’s only reasonable that she now wants the chance to make a different choice.

It’s all very reasonable, and very predictable, and utterly heart-breaking.

Because Newt has spent so much time with Anathema in the time since the Armageddon-that-wasn’t, and he knows just how great she is. How she wakes each morning with a little smile on her face and shifts to cuddle into the nearest warm object, how her forehead creases when she’s reading something that’s making her really think, how she laughs as she cycles through Tadfield, hair flowing behind her in the breeze. He knows the way she  _ cares _ , so much, for the world and the people in it, and he knows she struggles to show it in the ways most people understand, but he understands it, and he loves it, and he loves her.

Oh, god, how he loves her.

Alone in his childhood bedroom, Newt allows himself to curl up under the duvet and cry, just for a little while, just this once. He has been the warm object beside Anathema as she wakes, he has made her laugh in the streets of Tadfield, he has known what it is to be loved by her, and he has lost all of that. Not entirely - they’re still friends - but it’s not going to be the same.

He calls her that evening to tell her he’s home safe, as promised, and apologises for not calling earlier, and he chokes back the  _ I love you  _ that threatens to escape him as he hangs up. And then he goes on with his life. He finds a job putting leaflets through letterboxes, and after the first few days of cycling around town to make his deliveries, the bike stops reminding him so much of Anathema’s. He stops for lunch one day at a little tea shop, and stops himself just seconds before tipping the dregs from his cup onto the saucer. He bumps into a girl from school as they both try to duck out of the rain into the same shop doorway, and half an hour later he realises she might have been flirting, a bit, well, quite a lot, actually, and he's mildly flattered by it, rather than upset.

A month after leaving Tadfield, he’s only spoken to Anathema by text since that single, brief phone call, and that’s fine. She knows he’s there, if she wants to call, but she’s navigating a brave new world of choice and he wants to give her the space she needs. He looks forward to hearing her voice again, at some point, but not enough to risk her happiness for it - and, deep down, he’s dreading it, too. If he hears her voice, will it break his heart again? Better to let her set the pace, he thinks. Better for both of them.

He gets home from work one day to find his mother’s car missing and a bike locked to the lamppost outside the house. It’s a familiar bike; his heart pounds in his chest as he fits his key to the lock and turns it. He has to be calm, he has to seem composed, because if Anathema sees the emptiness in his heart where her smile used to sit, she will feel guilty, and he doesn’t want that. But when he opens the door and sees her sitting on his mother’s sofa, in his mother’s living room, she’s already slumped with her head in her hands.

“Anathema,” he breathes, dropping his keys and crouching down in front of her, “what’s wrong?”

“Newt! I- your mum went out to give us some space.”

“Did she say something?” He loves his mum, but she can be very protective of him, and as far as she’s concerned, Anathema broke his heart.

“No, she’s really nice, I just… I made a mistake. All these choices, I made a stupid decision and I don’t know if I can fix it.”

“All right.” Newt stands, slowly, and takes a seat next to her, trying not to feel too smug about the fact that she’s come to him. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, and we’ll see what we can do. It’s probably not as bad as you think, really.”

“There was this sweet guy,” Anathema admits, and Newt steels himself. He doesn’t want to hear about Anathema’s new boyfriend, but he wants to help. “I fell in love with him so hard and so fast, and he looked at me like I was the sun, you know, like I was everything that mattered in the world. And I felt the same way about him, but… I thought we were together for the wrong reasons, so I broke up with him.”

“Right,” Newt hedges, not quite following.

“Only I’ve been miserable ever since, and all I can think is how perfect we were together, how we never had a fight so bad we went to bed angry, and how much better my life was with him in it. It’s fine now,” she adds hastily, “I’m not just dependent on him. I just miss my best friend, and I miss my boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Newt manages, and then, “could you ask him to take you back?”

“I’m trying,” she tells him, and a hint of that smile he loves so much plays at the corners of her lips. “I know I ended things, but… could we try again?”

For a moment, Newt doesn’t understand. And then, all at once, he does.

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, we can.” Her smile is like sunshine breaking through the clouds, and he’s sure he’s grinning back at her, and as she throws her arms around him and kisses him he can’t help but feel that he’s the luckiest man in the world.

And this time, nobody’s great-grandmother is involved.


End file.
